Crime & Punishment in our Election System

[Mark]

There's a discussion going on at Black Box Voting about the possibility of ACORN having fraudulently registered voters, and whether this, if true, has the potential of swaying an election.

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/80363.html

You might wish to read the entire discussion, but I think my most recent post is of general interest to this group and have copied it below:
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I understand that Kurt is concerned about what is criminal and that Bev is concerned that if this criminality actually exists, it might sway an election.

I'm concerned about what is completely legal.

It was legal for the Supreme Court in 2000 to stop the vote counting in Florida.

It was then legal for Congress to swear in a President without bothering to finish counting the popular vote.

Could those votes, if they had been counted, have swayed the election? Many people believe so.

Was there anything illegal done or any crimes committed? No.

It was legal for one Presidential candidate to concede to the other in 2004, thus ensuring that the votes of many Americans would never be counted.

It was then legal for Congress to again swear in a President without bothering to finish counting the popular votes.

Could those votes, if they had been counted, have swayed the election? Many people believe so.

Was there anything illegal done or any crimes committed? No.

It was legal in 2006 for Congress to swear in a Representative before his election had been certified and while at least 58,000 votes remained uncounted.

Could those votes, if they had been counted, have swayed the election? Many people believe so.

Was there anything illegal done or any crimes committed? No.

If anything illegal was done in 2000, it was done by the Supreme Court, the highest law of the land.

If anything illegal was done in 2004 and 2006, no court has ever found so.

80% of U.S. votes are counted secretly inside central tabulators.

Can secret vote counting sway an election? Many people believe so.

Is it illegal to count votes secretly?

No, it is not and no court has found so.

Therefore, I am more concerned about legal and fully Constitutional acts that could sway an election, than about criminal acts that might sway an election. If criminal acts are proven to have swayed an election, they can be prosecuted. If legal acts are proven to have swayed an election, they can not be prosecuted. But in neither case can this change the results of an election because once a President or Member of Congress in sworn into office, only Congress can remove them from office.

If Bev's worst case scenario was true, and as many as one in 10,000 votes in the CA50 2006 special election were cast by fraudulently registered voters, that would mean that no more than 6 of those 58,000 uncounted votes were fraudulent. Suppose that this actually happened and was known to Congress. Would that stop them from swearing in a Representative before the election is certified and with 58,000 votes remaining uncounted? No, it would not. So investigating and pursuing this potential threat would in no way safeguard or improve our electoral process.

When candidates can LEGALLY be sworn into office without first counting the votes, nobody's vote matters. When nobody's vote matters, votes cast by fraudulently registered voters, if such exist, don't matter either.

[joe rossini]

BBV's Bev Beverages won't accept the logic you put forth, Mark. It's just too simple. They won't let you corner them like that. Instead, and if anyone has delivered a reply (I haven't looked), it will go off into details and excuses just as each and every 9/11 discussion does when simple logic is applied. So the cold war ended and capitalism needed a replacement. Call the guys in Langley (SP) and ask them if they have an idea how we can get ourselves outa this mess. Hi, this is Mr. X. We have this guy named Tim. He's been busy building a team that is almost ready to pull off a stunt in NYC. Can they make it? I doubt it. No prob, we'll help. We gotta help. Our future depends on this. Yip! Be right back, I gotta go vote. Vote? Ya gotta be kiddin.

[Mark]

You're right, Rossi. Several responses were posted. Bev finally locked down the thread on the grounds that it was generating too much traffic, and moved it to a different area for further discussions. So on the mailing list, they got the last word, which consisted of precisely the obfuscations you predicted, but in the new thread location, I was able to respond:

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/156/80362.html

I can only hope that some of those who have been following the discussion on the bbv mailing list, will continue to follow it to where it was moved.

[joe rossini]

I like Kurt's point here;

"Translation: if it comes from the Internet, it's useless as public opinion reserach. Why? Because it includes only people already self-evidently passionate about an issue. Nothing in which people CHOOSE TO participate can be assumed to represent the public opinion at large. And unfortunately, that includes the biggest self-selection of all - public elections. It is ONLY their incredibly large sample size, in elections with big turnouts, that makes them even marginally useful as a tool for measuring public sentiment. In low-turnout ones, no one should delude themsleves about what they measure other than a 'game' with a 'score'.

Oh yeah, and that game has a prize - power. If that's not enough to get infrequent voters out to vote in low turnout elections, shame on them."

The "power" Kurt refers to will never ever be in possession of the voting public. The "score" he refers to, her refers to as an analog score. You and I see it as a digital score. Or so I imagine. We have 1s and 0s. Digital as in "we win, you lose" or "you lose, we win". Taking that one step further, what it really boils down to is a "we continue to participate and let you screw us with the power we allow you to have over us" or "fuck you and the horse you rode in on".

So Bev locked the thread. At least she didn't delete it altogether! Nothing like a simple pattern of logic to twist a mind into that all too well known pattern of its eventually taking the ball away from the playing field and going home to leave the ones who were clearly in the advantage to look for a new game to persue. How childish, insecure, snobby, hochnässig and obviously wrong. I use German words by the way to show off. It makes me look as if I has a clue, or a degree. Language is a tool. You can use it to pin someone, to insult or hurt them or to evade having to answer a question or as is in the case of that discussion, to face reality and accept common sense over the struggle one has dedicated his life to. In other words, Bev's and most likely Kurt's primary motivation is to keep the struggle alive. You provided them with a solution that would end their struggle. Game over. Voter's / Voting Rights Movement DOA. Voting will get you nowhere. NOT voting, not participating - at all - is a much more powerful tool than an X on a ballot.

Oh, and aha, reminds me of something I heard on NPR or was it the Ed Schulz show last night. Kurds in Mosul refusing to participate in something or another and in affect seceding from Iraq? I was half asleep but that almost woke me up.

[joe rossini]

Nope, it was All Things Considered. Excerpt;

"Kurds Pull Out Of Provincial Government

But winner-takes-all politics have not gone over well. The 12 elected members of the Kurdish coalition walked out of the 37-member council. When al-Hadba still didn't budge, they went further.

The mayors from several Kurdish-majority districts around Mosul gathered April 20 to announce that they will no longer participate in the provincial government — effectively, they seceded."

I guess I was wide awake. You can't sleep and get that chalked into your memory.

source

[Mark]

Bev didn't lock the thread, just moved it so new responses wouldn't go out to the mailing list. But take a look at this thread:

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/77776/80351.html?1241887082

Bev's post is over the top, I replied rather calmly, I hope, but Joel Morine laid it right out on the table. Yeeehaw!

Rossi writes "....what it really boils down to is a 'we continue to participate and let you screw us with the power we allow you to have over us' or 'fuck you and the horse you rode in on.'"

And that's the way it is.

[Mark]

Strangely enough, that guy Kurt on BBV seems to have boxed himself in. He said that he had evidence of criminality by ACORN, informed his boss (this was back when Kurt was an elections official), and his boss did nothing.

So I asked why Kurt didn't take his evidence to the proper authorities.

Haven't heard a word from Kurt since.

[joe rossini]

Accessory (legal term) - Wikipedia

"COINTELPRO" ? What?? Holy shit, Batman!

[Mark]

Well whaddya know. It says, "An accessory must generally have knowledge that a crime is being, or will be committed. A person with such knowledge may become an accessory by helping or encouraging the criminal in some way, or simply by failing to report the crime to proper authority." So this big conservative law & order type who was so enraged about what he alleged were "criminal" acts by ACORN, in failing to report such acts to the proper authority, may have become an accessory to the crime. No wonder he's strangely silent lately.

Yeah, Ward Churchill's book, Agents of Repression, has a lot to say about the FBI and COINTELPRO. It does seem interesting that the FBI has been investigating ACORN looking for any evidence of a national conspiracy. That would mean that they have assigned agents all over the country. And that is likely to mean that many of those agents were specifically assigned to getting as far inside ACORN as they could and doing as much damage as they could. No wonder law enforcement is reluctant to help ACORN investigate the people who gathered phony voter registrations--in some cases such people may be higher up in law enforcement than the investigators.

I only had once contact with ACORN that I know of. Our local Environmental Health Coalition sent out an email a few years back asking people to please show up at a City Council meeting to show public support for or public opposition to some agenda item that I've completely forgotten. Anyway, there were a lot of ACORN people there, probably for the same reason that I was there, and you could tell them by their bright red t-shirts with the big ACORN logo. I don't recall talking to any of them, but they mostly appeared to be low income housewives and they certainly didn't look as if they had anything to hide.

[joe rossini]

good point on dis-info ! That hurts. Round one, logic. Round two, more of the same logic. Round three, Logic in da face, again and again. How long can this guy stay on his feet? He knew what? Told whom? And that one didn't do jack? Round four, a double whammy with logic & legal aspects in da face. He goes down. His trainer goes down. Da whole friggin ring collapses as the announcer steps up on top of the pile of what's left of it all....the mike is lowered as he takes a deep breath .............................

lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllLadies & Gentlemennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

and then, without a forewarning of any kind, he says it....


COINTELPRO


as the audience cheers on with DIS-INO, DIS-INFO, DIS-INFO !!

Hotdamn, them there BBVers got some real recoverin (damage ctrl.) to do.

[Mark]

ROFL. I just added that Wikipedia link to both discussions--thanks for posting it Rossi . Still not a peep from that Kurt guy. And it doesn't look like Bev is about to make any more unsubstantiated allegations either.

So rather than the nonpartisan election integrity group it claims to be, BBV might be just another right-wing media outlet? Interesting.

I've copied both discussion threads on BBV just in case Bev deletes them. I've had Bev delete an entire discussion before, or more precisely ask the website owner, Rob Kall, to delete it, which he did, back on opednews (before they banned me) when I refuted something she'd written, and I foolishly hadn't copied it first. I suppose I'll be banned from BBV soon too.

Nice to come home to noinnovember because nobody can ban me here--I'm the group owner. :)

[joe rossini]

Mark, your link to Wiki on BBV is bad/incomplete. Ya might wanna go back and add the good/complete URL link. Maybe not. The link takes us to Accessory and that's a big enough hint. BBV WILL exercise damage ctrl. You can bet on that. The first step will be to ban you. I'm willin to wage ......ten bucks.

[Mark]

No bet, Rossi. Bad enough that I'll probably be getting banned as soon as Bev can thing of an excuse, without also losing ten bucks in the bargain. ;)